Menu

Houses were burning on the morning of May 28, 2013, in Artex Compound, Barangay Panghulo, Malabon City. It was around 9 a.m.: breakfast smells still lingered in the air, sounds of daytime TV drifted outside open windows, and the children were sent to school just two hours ago. In fact, the day unfolded calmly: no different from any other morning in the village. Corazon Bascon, 66, was at the water pump near the main gate, filling plastic containers with water when she saw the cloud of gray smoke, rising darkly above the roofs of Pasilio B, where her house was located.Continue reading →

We walk along a grand colonial building in Yangon as the city falls asleep. Me, Jan, and Kim. Yellow lampposts light the quiet streets. Vendors pack up their wares. The Shwedagon Pagoda looms like a bright but distant star.

Note: I wrote this poem while stuck in Manila traffic. A boy really did send me a text asking me where the “prime real estate of my body” is :/ This should have been my reply — a poem for someone else.

My father and I joined my mother and her coworkers’ picnic in Thac Ba Lake when we went to North Vietnam last November. On a cold Thursday morning, we piled into a boat and travelled to a little island in Thac Ba, where, hours later, we would all get tipsy from drinking too much rice wine. Continue reading →

When I learned that the weather in Sapa dips to 10 degrees in winter, I was scared. Since I was 11 years old, I’ve nurtured a love-hate (but really, more hate) relationship with the cold.Continue reading →